The SEO’s world

Stoney de Geyter

Presented by Omayra Murguia

7 Best Things (Good) SEO's Do

SEO is a business that is much more than just implementing of a well-developed

website optimization strategy. Anybody can get SEO advice or learn some tips and

tricks by reading blogs, attending a conference, or participating in online webinars. If

you are an SEO, or you have or will hire an SEO, there is a relationship issue that is

part of any good business strategy.

That relationship feeds into the long-term success of your business. How the SEO

engages with you--the client--can make or break your success. Everybody wants a

good skilled SEO. But you should also want one that's good at business as well.

Here are seven things that good SEOs will do:

Plan

SEO cannot be shoved into a one-size-fits-all campaign. Every site is different, from

its architecture to navigation to content, therefore each site needs its own unique

SEO and marketing strategy. Good SEOs know this. Before you get a proposal for

services the SEO should have taken time to review your site in order to determine

what services you need most. Once the SEO work begins, more research needs to

be performed so a strategy for success can be developed.

There is much more to SEO than just throwing some keywords on the page. Good

SEOs plan out a strategy specific for every site they work with.

Communicate

The SEO and the client must be communicating on a regular basis. I've never seen

an SEO campaign that didn't require a client's involvement, and I would likely avoid

taking on a client that wanted to avoid involvement. The client knows their business

better than any SEO does and that input is valuable to creating a successful

campaign. And as the SEO progresses, the client needs to be kept informed of

what's going on and be given opportunity to provide their input. The client should also

have access to ongoing status updates and measurement reports.

Without communication the potential for a derailed SEO campaign is significant.

Good SEOs keep in regular contact with their clients, seeking their input and

providing status updates.

Focus on SE Friendly Architecture

SEOs have to focus on many things, most of which revolve around keywords. Many

clients still look at "keyword rankings" as a measure of success. But good SEO has

to go beyond adding keywords to the site, they also need to focus on a site's overall

architecture. A good site architecture can make a difference in a site's overall

performance by giving the search engines better access to all the content, cleaning

up spider-stopping or -slowing code and implementing a stronger internal link

structure.

The better the site's architecture is the greater the opportunity for SEO success.

Good SEOs will look for issues within the architecture that can or should be fixed for

better SEO results.

Educate

SEO deals in cutting edge technology. The search engines are always changing and

algorithm updates are made on a regular basis. SEOs must continue to stay

educated of these changes. While SEO strategies are remarkably consistent over

time, small subtle changes can, and often do, make a big difference. The SEO must

keep their team, and even their clients informed and educated. The clients need to

know how changes may affect them, and what the SEO's plans are if any

adjustments are to be made.

While not every bit of information is a game changer, keeping up with industry

changes is essential. Good SEOs keep up to date, and make sure clients stay

informed.

Focus on sales

Many businesses look to SEOs to improve their rankings. But really what they want is

someone to help them grow their business. Rankings are just a means to achieve

that goal. Despite what any client thinks they want, a good SEO will look beyond

rankings and help the client gain traffic and improve sales. This means they have to

analyze the progress of the campaign and the effect keyword rankings are having in

regard to traffic and sales. The SEO will also focus on usability issues that could

improve the ability of the site to do sell better.

Revenue is generally the number one thing clients want, even if they are not thinking

in those terms when hiring an SEO. Good SEOs help the client focus on the bigger

picture and measure success properly.

Compromise

As SEOs we often see things that need to be done and get frustrated when the client

doesn't do what we want. Clients often get frustrated when they don't feel the SEO

work has been successful. In order to get things done the SEO may need to

compromise. Maybe the client can't implement the change recommendations exactly

how the SEO wants it, so the SEO must work with the client to find solutions that can

be implemented while providing the best possible result.

Compromise is essential to SEO success. Good SEOs know that a half fix is better

than no fix at all. They go for the small victory now in hopes of the bigger victory later.

Test, review and re-strategize

There is no set-it and forget-it in SEO. While some major issues can be fixed up front,

keyword targeting and usability fixes are an ongoing, everlasting process. The SEO

campaign should be under constant review. New keywords should be tested and

optimized and new strategies for improvement should be implemented on a regular

basis. Unless the site runs out of keywords (very unlikely except in niche industries)

the SEO should always be targeting new phrases for ranking on a regular basis.

When it comes to SEO there is always more that can be done, provided it fits within

the scope of the client's contract. Good SEOs are looking for opportunities (in or

outside of that scope) that can help the client improve performance.

Good SEOs are not always easy to come by. Many SEOs know how to do one thing

really well, but don't focus on other essential aspects. The most important thing one

can find in an SEO is one that cares about his clients. Good SEOs want their clients

to succeed and are willing to make these seven best practices a part of their

business model.

October 6, 2009

http://www.searchengineguide.com/stoney-

degeyter/7-best-things-good-seos-do.php

7 Worst Things (Bad) SEO's Do

Some SEOs are better at running a business than they are at doing SEO. Others are

fantastic at SEO but have poor business practices. But the really bad SEOs have

poor business practices that translates into poor SEO, and therefore poor client

results. Not all bad SEOs are crooked, but that doesn't make you want to hire them

anymore.

How do you know that good SEOs from the bad ones? How can you tell those that

know what they are doing from those that don't? It's not always easy, but there are

some tell-tale signs.

Here are seven things that bad SEOs do:

Have "secret" strategies

Secrets are not becoming of an SEO. Sure many SEOs have strategies they would

rather not make public, but when when it comes to working with clients there are not

secrets. The SEO is not necessarily responsible for telling the client every detail

about what they do for their site, but clients have the right to know what strategies the

SEO is implementing and how those strategies may affect their site. If the SEO is

keeping secrets, it means they have something to hide.

Clients deserve an SEO that is open an honest with them. Bad SEOs keep their

clients uniformed in order to avoid accountability.

Narrowly focus on rankings

There is more to the success of a website than just rankings, but a lot of SEOs don't

know anything else. They offer "guarantees" that have enough small print to make

them useless, show off their "successes" using phrases and search engines that are

valueless, and tell you they have succeeded when they get useless keywords ranked

for you. Rankings are a means to an end and if those rankings are not delivering

targeted traffic that produces conversions, then it's all meaningless.

Rankings can be an important part of a client's success but should not be used as

the sole measurement. Bad SEOs focus on rankings to the detriment of their client's

success.

Don't think outside the SEO box

The job of the SEO is to help their clients succeed. There are many components to

achieving online success that fall outside the realm of standard SEO. The SEO

campaign can often benefit from these non-SEO strategies. While any particular

strategy may fall outside the scope of their contracts, it is the job of the SEO to keep

all such options in mind for the client to help them achieve long-term success.

SEOs must have more than just the SEO contract in mind, they should be looking for

additional ways to help their client's succeed. Bad SEOs focus on SEO only and

never offer tips and strategies that fall outside the contract.

Don't play well with others

A lot of work goes into an SEO campaign and its rare if the SEO is skilled enough to

do it all. Many SEOs a can do a lot of things well, but not all things expertly. SEOs

need to know their limitations, know when to outsource, and know when to bring in

additional experts to get the job done right. Whether its programming, copywriting,

link building, social media marketing, or anything else, the SEO needs to be willing to

find and work with those who fill in the holes for what they can't do.

Working with others, especially with client programmers, is essential to building a

strong SEO campaign. Bad SEOs try to do everything themselves or don't work with

others to find the best possible solution.

Resist client involvement

There are always clients that tend to call or email too much, but that's the rarity, not

the norm. SEOs need to encourage their clients to be involved in their campaigns,

from keyword selection to approval of the content that goes on the site. Client

involvement is necessary to ensure that the SEO stays on course, optimizes the right

keywords, and keep the site properly targeted.

The SEO benefits from the client's industry knowledge and the client benefits from

the SEO's research. Bad SEOs plunge full steam ahead keeping their client

uninvolved, often to the detriment of the client's success.

Drop the ball

Its easy to lose interest in an SEO campaign. When the easy work is over and the

real strategizing needs to begin, the SEO can often find simpler and greener

pastures with other clients. SEOs should never be "satisfied" with how a client is

performing or stop looking for ways to build upon past success. The SEO must

continue to analyze the performance of their efforts and develope newer strategies

that will continue to push the client toward success.

SEO doesn't stop after a few strategies are implemented. There is always more to

do. Bad SEOs get "burned out" working on a client, but continue to collect a check for

doing minimal work.

Don't care about their clients

Bad SEOs use SEO as a money generating machine, rather than as a way to help

other people succeed. There is nothing with SEOs making money, but if that is their

primary motivation then they shouldn't have clients. Those SEOs that take on clients

do so because they want to help other people succeed just as they have succeeded

themselves.

SEO is a service industry. Bad SEOs are primarily looking to service themselves and

use hard working people like you to fulfill their selfish desires.

Many people have a bad experience with SEO and make assumptions about all

SEOs. Failure can come from many avenues. Most often it's just misinformation and

improper expectations. It's not always easy differentiating between the good SEOs

and the not-so-good ones, but the bad ones are more easily to spot. Not every good

SEO will be able to get you the results you expect, but that doesn't make them bad.

By looking at the SEO's business practices, seeing how they interact with their

current and past clients, the good rise to the surface. If you're not sure... if somethign

seems off, it probably is.

http://www.searchengineguide.com/stoney-

degeyter/7-worst-things-bad-seos-do.php

7 Best Things (Good) SEO Clients Do

It’s amazing how much can get accomplished when you've got a good client and a

good SEO working together. Unlike many other forms of advertising and marketing,

the success of an SEO campaign can often depend on the client, and their

involvement/interaction with the SEO. Good SEO clients know what is needed to help

the SEO succeed but don't stand in the way of that success.

Having a successful business and/or marketing campaign doesn't happen passively.

It happens with deliberation and intent. The client cannot completely pass off

responsibility for her success onto the SEO, but must take actions to ensure the SEO

can be successful for her.

Here are seven things good SEO clients do:

Trust the SEO

Unless you hired the first SEO you stabbed your finger at in the yellow pages, you've

likely done a bit of research before selecting one. During this selection process SEO

clients should have taken the time to get a feel for the SEO ensuring that the SEOs

offerings are in line with their needs. Ultimately, clients need to know they will be able

to build a strong, long-term working relationship with the SEO. By signing on the

dotted line the SEO client puts themselves into a relationship that now requires trust.

If you can't trust someone, why hire them to begin with? Good SEO clients trust that

their SEO knows what they are doing and steps back allowing them to do what they

were hired for.

Ask for advice

Before doing anything to the website SEO clients should talk to the SEO first. Too

often a client plows ahead with site changes without first asking the SEO the best

way to proceed. Even minor changes can totally wipe out much of the work an SEO

has done leaving the SEO to pick up the pieces on their dime. Instead, clients should

work with the SEO to find the best way to proceed with any changes before they are

made. Clients must be certain that changes they are making won't have a long-

lasting negative impact on their search engine exposure.

SEOs are there to help you succeed. Good SEO clients seek their SEO's advice

before moving forward on site changes to ensure the SEOs work remains intact.

Question recommendations

There is nothing wrong with asking questions, and a good client is willing to take the

time to understand what the SEO is doing or requesting and why. SEO

recommendations can often be one-sided or requested without a full and complete

understanding of what is best for the client (after all, the client knows their business

better than the SEO does.) When a client seeks to learn more about the goal behind

any recommendations, changes are often warranted so exposure and site

performance will not be at odds.

Not every recommendation made is a good one. Good SEO clients ask the SEO

questions so they can understand and provide input of their own.

Implement recommendations

After questioning and understanding recommendations provided by the SEO it is the

client's job to make sure the recommendations get implemented. Its understandable

that not all recommendations are immediately implementable; some require

programming, time and money. But the goal should be to move forward as quickly as

possible on any and all legitimate recommendations.Clients that leave long lists of

unimplemented recommendations have no business complaining about the

performance of the SEO campaign.

The SEO was hired for their advice. Good SEO clients heed that advice and seek to

implement the recommendations provided by the SEO. They communicate when

recommendations they cannot implement and discuss alternate solutions.

Pay on time

This is pretty self-explanatory. We all run businesses here. You want your customers

to pay on time and you should do the same. The SEO is there to help you succeed.

They can't do that if they are not being paid on time.

Good SEO clients pay their SEO bill on time because they realize their SEO is

working hard to make their client's business grow.

Measure results, not rankings

The measure of a successful campaign is not the number of rankings achieved, or

even the specific keywords that have gotten ranked in #1 positions. Those are good

metrics to consider, but the real success of a campaign is whether it is bringing in

targeted visitors and getting conversions. The SEOs number one job is to help you

grow their client's business. If the rankings are not achieving that goal then a change

needs to be made in the SEO campaign.

All the rankings in the world have little value if there are no conversions to go with.

Good SEO clients measure conversions instead of rankings and report their

successes back to the SEO

Get involved

Clients must to be involved in the SEO campaign. Not only in implementing

recommendation, but in working with the SEO to develop long-term strategies for

success. Keyword research requires the client to help sort through irrelevant terms,

link building requires the client to write linkable content or working established

contacts, social media requires the client to develop campaigns that make sense.

The uninvolved client is nothing more than a paycheck to the SEO. Good SEO clients

work with their SEO, getting involved in the planning, research and implementation of

their SEO campaign.

No client wants their SEO campaign to be a failure. But often SEO clients can get in

the way of their own success. It's important that clients follow the seven best

practices listed here. Their reward will be their own success.

October 8, 2009

http://www.searchengineguide.com/stoney-degeyter/7-

best-things-good-seo-clients-do.php

7 Worst Things (Bad) SEO Clients Do

There are clients SEOs love to have... and then there are those other kind. Every

SEO has them and very few SEOs can be so selective as to weed out every client

that isn't the "perfect client" (and those that do generally work only for themselves.)

Being the perfect client may not be attainable, but you can certainly avoid being the

bad client nobody wants. Here are seven things bad SEO clients do:

Unreasonable expectations

It's not always the client's fault when there are unreasonable expectations.

Sometimes the SEOs propagate misinformation in order to get the sale. Other times

once they get involved in the site things look far different than they originally

appeared. It is the responsibility of the client to ensure their expectations are in check

with reality, despite any claims of the SEO. This is especially true when it comes to

overall expectations vs. monetary investment. There is only so much that can be

done with the time and money allotted.

Expectations should be closely guarded with plenty of room for moving the goalpost,

depending on the situation. Bad SEO clients expect results outside the bounds of

what is likely and refuse to temper those as things change.

Don't return calls or emails

There is nothing worse than an SEO campaign being slowed down or halted by lack

of client communication. If your SEO is asking for feedback, there is a reason for it. If

they are waiting on you to provide information it's possible that your campaign will

remain at a standstill until they get it. Make it a point to answer all communications

from your SEO as quickly as possible. The only person that suffers from holding

things up is you!

Clients need to be engaged with the marketing process. Bad SEO clients can often

be their own worst enemy and can impair the marketing efforts by not returning calls

and emails to the SEO.

Forwarding SEO spam emails

Why is it that SEO clients often have trouble with recommendations proposed by their

SEO but whenever they get a spam email they forward it asking, "why aren't you

doing this?" This is the ultimate example of not trusting the SEO. You're putting your

faith in a complete stranger who's spamming every site they can rather than trusting

that your SEO knows what they are doing. If your site can't be found, did you ever

wonder how the spammers found you?

Clients need to be involved in the campaign development process, but bad SEO

clients forward every SEO spam email they get. This forces the SEO to take time

away from actual SEO work to explain why the email is wrong, why things aren't as

the email says they are, and to defend their work. That's hours of wasted time.

Overwriting SEO's work

This is a personal pet peeve. SEOs go though a lot of research and effort before

making any changes to a client's site. Whether the changes are a major reworking of

a page, or a few minor edits to a title tag, they all have reason and merit. The

quickest way to keep an SEO from being successful with your optimization campaign

is to overwrite their changes with your own. Fortunately, the CodeMonitor tool will

notify the SEOs within 24 hours any time a monitored page changes (we monitor all

our client's optimized pages.) However it's still up to the client to ensure such

overwriting doesn't happen.

To be successful the SEOs work must remain in tact. Bad SEO client's don't take the

time to ensure they or their team work only from the live SEOd version of the site.

Argue every recommendation

I once had a client that went item by item arguing every recommendation we made.

Calls to action? Too lowbrow for his audience. Using keywords? Too pedantic. It's

important for the client to seek to understand the reasoning behind the changes, but

you can't expect the SEO to improve your website's exposure if you are tying their

hands in their efforts. If you don't agree with what the SEO is doing, give them the

rope to hang themselves. Track the results, if conversions drop then undo it. But at

least give it a chance to perform.

Clients need to understand the value of what the SEO is doing. Bad SEO clients

question every change forcing the SEO to exhaust hours of time explaining and

defending every decision.

Try to out SEO the SEO

I'm a strong proponent of the client being involved and having an understanding of

the overall SEO campaign. However there comes a point where the client has to let

the SEO do their job. The SEO was hired because they have a skill set and area of

expertise, presumably one the client themselves don't have. The client can't assume

they know more about SEO than the SEO does and must give the SEO freedom to

implement SEO their way.

Working with the SEO with brainstorming and strategy development is a good thing.

Bad SEO clients push for every SEO tactic they learn about or supplement their own

SEO knowledge into the campaign.

Call/email all the time

Communication is essential to a well-oiled optimization machine, but too much of

anything is a bad thing. Clients who call the SEO up on a regular bases because they

want to talk about this, that or the other, are not doing themselves any favors.

Whether they want to talk strategy, success, implementation or whatever, these

communications must be done in an orderly fashion. The SEO should not be

expected to field regular unwarranted calls from the client that suck up the time they

would otherwise be investing in that client's SEO campaign.

Clients should be interested in their campaign but not at the expense of the

campaign itself. Bad SEO clients spend more time talking to the SEO than the SEO

has available, preventing them from doing the job they were hired for.

SEOs love to work with good clients. Consequently, good SEO clients get better

results than bad SEO clients. Bad SEO clients suck up the SEO's time, create

distractions from the campaign and prevent the SEO

from doing the things that get the results the client

ultimately wants. Ensuring that you are not a bad SEO

client also ensures that the SEO can focus on your

success.

October 14, 2009

http://www.searchengineguide.com/stoney-degeyter/7-

worst-things-bad-seo-clients-do.php

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